Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream poll

Yes mate

this is one of the few overstuffed running-time alt-rock CDs that earns it, really feels full and epic and monumental. it takes time to get to know it. a real challenge for those weaned on the pop-song tightness of idk Nevermind and the Blue Album. and a good tee-up for MCIS being the only noteworthy alt-rock double album and also very much having the feel of a double album. you could maybe cut idk one song from SD, if you had to, but more than that and it'd be diminished in grandeur no matter what the songs were.

Yeah, it doesn't feel overlong, despite its hour-plus length.

This album rules

Disarm is the best song though. I’m surprised it fared so poorly.

I agree that it should end after Mayonaise, specifically at the point where Luna ends.

I love this album but I skip "Disarm", sorry treesh.:(

what's a boy supposed to do

Dirty (a contemporaneous Butch Vig joint) is a few minutes shorter, but feels two hours longer.

I love Dirty but that's completely accurate

Tbh, "Silverfuck" is the only song after "Mayonnaise" I really need. I do really love the other nine songs!

Oh wait, "Luna" - I do like that one.

is that a real song

I think I've been skipping past "Quiet" since the late 90s.

iirc "Silverfuck" is kind of a huge gaping hole. The band just isn't strong enough to carry off that kinda jam.

https://youtu.be/k6zFyT3n0wE

oops, that's supposed to be Mungo's Hi Fi version of Soma which came out a few weeks back

https://youtu.be/k6zFyT3n0wE

the end of "hummer" is the best thing bc ever did

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), woensdag 9 september 2020 22:06 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Thanks to this thread just listened to this for the first time in idk 10 years maybe. Mayonaise destroyed me - everything after it is fine though. Maybe going from the emo epic of Mayonaise to a ballad to a prog epic to a nursery rhyme to a lullaby could seem OTT but Doctor Casino otm, I wouldn't want to cut anything.

For me, this album is more about the proggy second half than the dirgey first half. But I was raised on Mellon Collie

I think it earns it's length *and* overstays its welcome. Sometimes I'll skip Today or Disarm or Sweet Sweet; other days I'll let it run. Part of the reason I love it, is that sense of it never being complete, full of wells and alleyways I forget are there. I think it's more down to when I discovered both albums, but I sort of twin it with the first Tindersticks album in that regard: 25-odd years of listening and not really any nearer the bottom of it.

in retrospect, it feels like a transitionary album: the first half being a meatier, less-washy take on Gish, the second half hinting at the stylistic alleyways they'd explore further on Mellon Collie.

I think I heard Mellon Collie before Siamese Twins and I wouldn't care to hear the former at all. Pumpkins is pretty much Corgan and Butch Vig doing Loveless outtakes and Silverfuck is the point where that runs out of puff.

I would only return to bits of Pisces Iscariot.

Do bands still release B-sides compilations? Or is that just not a thing any more? Thinking about the great B-sides comps of the nineties - Incesticide, Pisces Iscariot etc, this is a bit of shame

I think it earns it's length *and* overstays its welcome. Sometimes I'll skip Today or Disarm or Sweet Sweet; other days I'll let it run. Part of the reason I love it, is that sense of it never being complete, full of wells and alleyways I forget are there.

Totally OTM. It's also interesting how some ppl here are saying Loveless; others prog, emo, Queen, Rush, etc.

iirc "Silverfuck" is kind of a huge gaping hole. The band just isn't strong enough to carry off that kinda jam.

I agree with this (in the context of the album) - BUT, fwiw, I saw them play the song live in Nov. 1991, and it was v atmospheric and memorable. Guess they couldn't quite capture that on tape, for whatever reason.

(Can Butch Vig not do "dynamimcs"? I mean that's kind of his thing, right - "loud/quiet/loud"? Or is it more "loud, with brief stretches where everything but the bass drops out"?)

(sorry for the typo, but I kinda like it)

I've somehow managed never to hear this album in its entirety. Beyond the big singles, I was never that drawn to the Pumpkins, in no small part because of lil' Billy's vocal antics.

Totally OTM. It's also interesting how some ppl here are saying Loveless; others prog, emo, Queen, Rush, etc.

He's been very open about his love for, and influence from, MBV as well as Queen and Rush.

yup, merging the old and contemporary influences skillfully was BC's main innovation I think (along with about 6-7 years of remarkably prolific songwriting)

Yes, I was pointing out how it's a multifaceted album in that respect - it sounds like MBV to some ppl and Queen to others (and they're all "correct").

To bring up Pavement again (heh heh) - it's like how some ppl were sure that their early stuff sounded like the Swell Maps, others called them a Fall ripoff, others said Tall Dwarves, VU, Wire, SY, etc. They were all right! And yet Pavement also just sounded like Pavement.

revisitng this as I always happy to

Soma / Geek / Mayo might be the best hat trick of....any rock album, really

it's really amazing that even though a bunch of the outtakes are great they more or less nailed the song selection and sequence

the only change I might be tempted to suggest just for variety's sake would be to find a place for Iha's gorgeous "Blew Away"

the only sd-era b-side i'd want on the album is "whir," and god knows it doesn't fit and is perfect where it is on pisces iscariot

i love this discussion about sd's sequencing and length btw, i've listened to this album millions of times and i probably couldn't tell you what the tracklist is in order, every move it makes is kind of a surprise that also adds some new dynamic to the record

I would watch a movie-length documentary about butch and billy trying to select/sequence this record tbh

re: the dynamics discussion earlier, idk that there's a 90s major label rock song with a more extreme dynamic shift than "Soma"; the quiet parts are genuinely, hauntingly quiet. I remember always being at the ready to crank the volume nob down before the RIFF crashes in

album is also a feat of mixing cf. the layered guitar nonsense all over but for instance cf. the layered guitar nonsense at the end of "today"

amazing the drums don't sound like cardboard

also i realize billy corgan's voice is objectively horrible but that gentle high-whisper thing he often does floats over the guitar crunch really nicely and his voice is genuinely pleasing to my ear on parts of "hummer" "soma" and "mayo" and especially the verses of "rocket" (caveat i actually really love billy's studio singing up to a point and that point is machina/zwan; his live singing... mostly regrettable)

yes yes yes (re high whisper)

Yeah - I have no problem with his voice on these early records.

nice to see the enthusiasm for this record. as a teen i listened to it a lot but i never really burned for it. i just listened to the first half and beyond being surprised that i have it all mostly memorized, it really does nothing for me now - sort of nice to confirm that i'm just not into this band at all through going back to what everyone seems to agree is their best record. though weirdly i like reading all of these threads about them.

also i just wanted to say that the drums on "geek usa" are insane

jimmy chamberlin has secret octopus arms

Corgan has that kind of voice where you wonder how he ever decided he could/should be a singer. It's an objectively bad noise a lot of the time and he must have a stupid amount of self-confidence/delusion to force it upon the world (I realise lacking confidence isn't something of which you could accuse Corgan).

Ftr, I love his voice on Siamese Dream (and fell gradually out of love with it).

My guess is Corgan knows he’s a bad singer but still wants to record his own songs. Singing is hard!

I would probably enjoy them less if they had a “good” singer tbh